The Gull

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VoujME 6 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, DECEMBER, 1924

Number 12

DECEIWESR MEETING: The next regular meeting of the Association
will be held on Thursday evening, 11th inst., at eight o’clock, in the As-
sembly Hall of the Public Library, corner of McAllister and Larkin Sts
Take elevator to third floor. Car lines No. 5 or No. 19.

The feature of the evening will be the first connected and complete ac-
count that has been given of the visitors entertained by our Vice-President,
Mrs. G. Earle Kelly, in her home garden in Alameda, during the past six
years and many of our members will be surprised to learn of the “Possi-
bilities of Binding in a Small Garden.” Visitors will be made welcome at
the meeting.

* * * *

DECEMBER FIELD TRIP will be taken on Sunday, December 14th, to
Golden Gate Park. Take McAllister car No. 5, “Beach” sign, to 43d Avenue
entrance on Fulton St. Bring lunch.

The usual route will be followed, skirting Chain Lakes, and passing
Stadium, Spreckels, Lloyd and Stow Lakes, ending at Japanese tea garden,
where lunch will be eaten if it has survived to this point. The lecture of
the day at the Academy of Sciences, at three o’clock, will be given by Mr.
J. M. Gwinn, Superintendent of San Francisco Public Schools. Subject:
“The Place of the Public Schools in the Program of San Francisco.”

* * *

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NOVEMBER MEETING: The ninety-

fourth regular meeting of the Association was held on November 13th, in
the Assembly Hall of the San Francisco Public Library, with President
Kibbe in the chair; Mrs. Carl R. Smith, Secretary; eleven members and one
guest in attendance.

There being no business to transact, Past Honorary President Joseph
Dixon proceeded at once with his review of the present status and “Probable
Fate of the Sage Hen in California.”

This bird is restricted principally to the sage plains and formerly ranged
from British Columbia to a short distance south of Mono lake, reaching
eastward to the Black Hills country, but it is now very much reduced and.
without some effective sort of protective measures, would seem to be on the
way to extinction. It is the largest of the upland game birds of the
country, withal very variable in size, the males ranging from twenty four
to thirty three inches in length, and occasionally attaining a weight of eight
pounds, and the females a length of twenty one inches and a weight of five
pounds. Their range in California extends from the southerly end of Mono
lake, up the backbone of the Sierra to Lassen county, westward to Mt. Las-
sen and up into Modoc county.

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[ December

The hen’s clutch consists of seven to nine eggs and the cock apparently
leaves the entire responsibility of raising the young to the mother. In the
early summer the birds subsist upon insects, taking to grass and other
vegetation later and in September they eat the sage brush leaves and live
on these until the insects return the following year. In the stomach of one
bird were found between 1500 and 2000 sage leaves. They prefer the shorter
growths of brush, possibly on account of greater safety. They have a finely
sustained soaring flight, flying low for a distance of one half or as much as
a whole mile before alighting again, after being alarmed. On the other
hand, they seem liable at times to become confused and may be killed with
a stick and when their feathers are wet, they have difficulty in attaining
flight in time to save themselves.

The speaker found limited areas in the northern part of the state where
these birds seem to be holding their own. Flocks of twenty to over fifty
were counted, but in general it is certain that their numbers are not only
greatly reduced, but are steadily decreasing. A sheepherder of ten years
experience in one area stated his conviction that the decrease is due to
hunters. Ten years ago local people would come from limited distances in
wagons and do some shooting, but with the inordinate development of the
automobile, the radius of travel has enormously increased and now large
numbers of sportsmen come from San Francisco or further, and it is Bang!
Bang! as long as a bird can be found to shoot at. On the other hand, a
hunter of several years experience stated that it has been increasingly
difficult to get the four-a-day or eight-a-week limit, because of the sheep and
their herders tramping out the nests of the birds. Probably both of these
conditions are operating to the damage of the birds, but, whatever the
causes, ten years more destruction at the present rate will eliminate them
from the list of California game birds.

The suggestion has been made that the birds should be domesticated,
but the difficulty in this plan lies with the question of feeding. Mr. Dixon
had one bird in camp whose wing had been slightly injured and every effort
was made to keep it alive, but it ate very little and lived for no more than
a week. The large ranch upon which camp was made, was in a sense a sort
of refuge, but there were some 26,000 sheep grazing over it and the birds
could not be expected to prosper under such circumstances.

Nevada has an antelope refuge abutting on the California line in this
vicinity and the sage hens could share their range in comfort. If California
should establish a refuge say twenty by thirty miles in extent, adjacent to
the antelope refuge, it would be admirable for the birds as well. The most
practicable relief, however, seems to lie in a closed season for such time
as is found necessary for the birds to re-establish themselves and we shall
have to come to this if we wish to retain this admirable game fowl.

A general discussion followed the lecture, during which reference was
made to the lamentable over-grazing of our National Forest areas and the
effect thereof upon a long list of our game birds and mammals, and the
meeting adjourned with expressions of appreciation of the interesting treat-
ment of the subject of the lecture.

* * *

CRANES

On March 20, 1918, near Chowchilla, at 12:30 p. m„ high in the air I
saw what I was positive was a flock of about fifty sandhill cranes and at that
time there was no doubt in my mind, as in years ago I had killed a goodly
number of these birds on the prairies of what was then the Territory of
Dakota. The sandhill, and occasionally a whooping, crane were a welcome
addition to the family larder and in fortunate years we secured enough of
them to enable us to salt down a barrelful. I considered myself perfectly
familiar with the bird and intended to tell my bird friends what I had seen.

1924 1

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About the time that sandhill cranes were uppermost in my mind, a copy
of the “Game Birds of California” reached me and, after reading the chap-
ters on cranes, I decided to say nothing as I was in doubt whether these
were Little Brown or Sandhill Cranes.

At Lake Almanor, July 30th, 1923, about 4:30 a. m., I was awakened by
the call of a crane. I sat up, wide awake in an instant, and saw flying over-
head four craues, sandhill in all respects and giving the old familiar notes.

They passed over again the same night at 8:37, when it was too dark to
see them. Our camp was evidently in a flight line to a feeding ground and
I made my plans accordingly. At 9:10 a. m. the following day, I flushed four
cranes apparently out of a tree near a small mud flat. It was possible that
they came from the ground as they were compelled to rise over the tree tops
or else to fly over the lake, and in no instance did I see them over the water.
I was within 300 yards and judged these birds to be “sandhill cranes,” in
fact all doubts were removed from my mind.

The feeding ground was a small mud flat on the shore of the lake, where
they plowed up the mud in furrows from 30 to 36 inches long, but I did not
succeed in finding the attraction. They also fed farther down the lake, on a
point which was well populated with frogs. Tracks in the mud measured
seven and a quarter inches and there was practically no variation in size or
coloration of the birds, so I adjudged them all to be adults. Quoting the
“Game Birds of California,” this crane nests from southern British Columbia
south to the California line and should not have been in the vicinity of Lake
Almanor at this season. The “Condor,” vol. xxvi, number 6, Joseph Maillard
makes mention of the nesting of the Sandhill Crane at Middle Lake near
Eagleville. Under date of May 27, he found an abandoned nest and sighted
a half grown crane walking with its parents in a nearby field at dusk. It is
evident that the Sandhill Crane is nesting in small numbers in the Alpine
lake region of Modoc county.

Carl R. Smith.

* * *

A FEAT IN MEMORY AND MIMICRY

The November Bulletin of the Massachusetts Auclubon Society quotes the
following extract from the Roxbury Tribune of that state:

Recalling after fifty-seven years the song of a then unidentified bird and
whistling it note by note to a piano with such fidelity that the bird was
identified, is the unusual feat recently of Dr. John Warren Achorn, President
of the Sandhills Bird Club, Pine Bluff, N. C. The Doctor said afterward that
his pucker string for whistling was not as good as it used to be when he was
a boy and he had quite a tussle of it at times getting the right note. He
told the story to a reporter for the Tribune.

“When I was a boy I used to drive cows to pasture in the morning and go
for them at night, in Newcastle, Me. The pasture bars looked into the west,
and about a quarter of a mile from the pasture entrance, on a rise cf land,
stood three great pine trees, tall enough for masts for ships that sail the
world around. In these pine-tops I used to hear a bird sing, its clear notes
coming to me very distinctly as I stood by the pasture bars, although the
pines were a quarter of a mile away. I asked my father what that bird was
1 heard singing in the pine-tops at sunset, and he said it was a wood lark.
My father was something of a naturalist, but the name he gave me un-
doubtedly was a local one.

“All of my life I have looked for that name, wood lark, in various bird
books, but never have been able to find it. About five years ago I sat down
by the piano and had my wife take down, as I whistled it, what that bird
singing in the pine-tops had said to me fifty-seven years before. I then sent

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the score as written out by Mrs. Achorn to C. J. Maynard of West Newton,
the oldest ornithologist, perhaps, in this country, and asked him it he
would interpret the song for me. His answer came hack promptly. It was
the hermit thrush I had heard. 1 thought I had done well to remember toi
fifty-seven years the Jenny Lind song of that bird.

“Once I stalked the bird, creeping out under the pine trees, close to which
ran a stone wall. Looking up into the tops of the trees, I saw a bird, eight
or nine inches long, hop up among the branches, and that undoubtedly was
my hermit thrush, but I could not believe it at the time, for the sound
came over to me so clearly standing by the pasture bars that I felt l must
see a bird as large as an owl.”

* * *

NOVEMBER FIELD TRIP was taken on Sunday, the 16th, to Lake
Lagunitas, via Ross and Phoenix Lake. The day was beautiful, clear and
sunny, but comfortably cool.

The notable features of the trip were the ring-necked ducks at Phoenix
Lake; the white-throated sparrow and a red-breasted sapsucker at Ross.
This is the first occasion in seven years’ birding that the Association has
recorded this sapsucker in this vicinity.

Lunch was eaten at the picnic grounds below the Lagunitas dam and a
goodly portion of the party enjoyed the circuit of the lake along the shore
trail For some reason no Townsend warblers were observed on this oc-
casion, but a dusky warbler substituted for him. Return to Ross was made
in time to catch the 4:35 p. m. train for San Francisco. Everyone was oh
the lookout for the creepers, going and coming through Ross, but they did
not appear.

Birds encountered on the Bay were: Glaucous-winged, western, Cali-

fornia and ring-billed gulls, Forster tern, Brandt cormorant and surf scoter.
On land and lakes: Canvas-back, scaup, ring-necked and ruddy ducks; coot,
a flock of thirty or forty band-tailed pigeons, Harris woodpecker, red-
breasted sapsucker, California woodpecker and red-shafted flicker; black
phoebe, coast and California jays, crow and purple finch; white-throated and
golden-crowned sparrows, junco and song sparrow; San Francisco and Cali-
fornia towliees, Hutton vireo, dusky and Audubon warblers, Vigors and
winter wrens; plain titmouse, chickadee, bush and wren tits and ruby
crowned kinglet flaunting his torch; hermit thrush, robin, varied thrush and
western bluebird. Forty-two species.

Members in attendance: Mesdemoiselles Ayer, Pettit and Schroder;

Mesdames Mexia and Witt; Messrs. Grueningen, Kibbe and Myers; Ananda
and Eric Jacobs. As guests, Misses Allison Thompson and Sylvia Bastian;
Henry Levy, Lawrence Mendelsohn of Scout Troop 17, and Felix Jacobs.
Ten members and five guests.

AUDUBON ASSOCIATION OF THE PACIFIC

FOR THE STUDY AND THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS

President A. S. Kibbe 1534 Grove St., Berkeley

Recording Secretary Mrs. Carl R. Smith £63 42d Ave., San Francisco

Corresponding Secretary C. B. Lastreto 260 California St., San Francisco

Treasurer C. R. Thomas 1605 Rose St.., Berkeley

Meets second Thursday of each month, at 8:00 p.m., in Assembly Hall of San Francisco
Public Library, Larkin and McAllister Streets.

Address Bulletin correspondence to President.

Subscription to Bulletin alone, 35c per year.

Single copies 5c